When I was first starting to write poetry in my early 20s, I didn’t really understand much about it. I hadn’t been an English major in college, nor had I read much American poetry. So I felt simultaneously thrilled, destabilized, and confused...

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Izobel Brannigan is an ordinary girl, working a good but dull public relations job, and with a lousy--but slightly less dull--boyfriend. Out of boredom, she decides to Google herself and finds an entire Web site devoted to her, describing a fun, exciting, and glamorous lifestyle that she's certain she's not living. Curious, she starts searching for the mysterious admirer who thinks so highly of her, and no one is safe from her questions. Her friends, her coworkers, old boyfriends...even new flames are all at risk. The more she searches, the more her life begins to reflect what she read on the Internet. After dumping the boyfriend and doing some serious soul-searching, Izobel begins to wonder who's more real: Izobel Brannigan the person, or Izobel Brannigan.com?

Review

"Thirty-year-old Londoner Izobel Brannigan is uninspired by both her middling job at public relations firm PR O'create and her snoozer of a boyfriend, George, but things take a turn for the mysterious when she Googles herself and finds someone has set up a Web site under izobelbrannigan.com. Initially, the site is blank, but it is soon filled with bio clips, recent photographs and glowing testimonials, but nothing that reveals its creator's identity. Izobel and a girlfriend theorize the 'stalkie' culprit may be a former boyfriend, but neither woman has the technological expertise to investigate this premise. Enter PR O'create's IT consultant, Ivan Jaffy, who works the tech front while Izobel questions  to no avail  her likeliest exes about their possible involvement. As Ivan teaches Izobel about HTML coding, she discovers he has a seductive artistic side hidden behind his geekery. But could he, with his Web-savvy, be the flattering cyber-stalker? Though Hopkinson's novel is charmingly British ('those spods and boffins had made a mint'), the dilemmas Izobel faces in this techie romp are universal and will certainly resonate with U.S. readers." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis

A woman Googles her own name and finds true love in the bargain in this intelligent, funny, and heartwarming debut novel. Discovering a Web site devoted to her and the lifestyle she's certain she's not living, she searches for the mysterious admirer.

About the Author

CHRISTINA HOPKINSON lives in London, England, with her husband and son.